Brown University doctoral student Zainab Iftikhar is the friend people turn to when they need to talk.
“My family jokes that I’m the ‘therapist friend’ everyone calls when they have a problem,” Iftikhar said.
Her capacity for caregiving has informed her research at Brown, where she is focused on exploring technology’s therapeutic strengths and weaknesses to find ways people can best use AI to support social and mental health. Her research has spotlighted humans’ inherent ability to offer and detect empathy, which is something that chatbots, text-based therapists and other artificial intelligence systems don’t do well, she said.
The chatbots routinely violated core mental health ethics standards, underscoring the need for legal standards and oversight.
In a new article, The Brown Daily Herald talks to Brown CS faculty member Ellie Pavlick about Brown's new AI Research Institute on Interaction for AI Assistants (ARIA), funded by a $20 million grant from the National Science Foundation to study human-artificial intelligence interactions and mental health.
A new imaging technique turns motion blur into an advantage, using a jiggling camera and a clever algorithm to create super-resolution images sharper than would be possible with a steady camera.
Michael is working with colleagues to develop guidance for using AI in the classroom, looking for new opportunities in AI-enabled research and identifying how AI might help the University run even more effectively.
Two new classes offered through Brown’s Cogut Institute for the Humanities add critical and historical context to deep questions surrounding artificial intelligence and large language models.
Creative, charming, and modern? That's us, and it's part of why USA Today declared Providence's the nation's second most walkable city to visit.
Abundant parking, ease of access, and restrooms with floral bouquets are just some of the reasons why The Washington Post ranked Providence's T.F. Green International Airport the nation's sixth best.
As Brown’s first associate provost for artificial intelligence, he has a campus-wide charge to steer the University through the tectonic shifts of machine learning—and thwart the paper-clip singularity.
Dear Class of 2025,
We’re leaving Brown together—you’re graduating, I’m retiring. Most of you started in 2021 (wearing masks). I started teaching at Brown in 1976 (maskless but with darker and longer hair), before there was a CS department. Most of you have spent four years here; I’ve spent my entire professional career at Brown.
